


I Don't Mean To Suggest That I Love You The Best

by gilligankane



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-17 08:31:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilligankane/pseuds/gilligankane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The moment is over and Brittany is a call girl again, hopping from bed to bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Don't Mean To Suggest That I Love You The Best

**Author's Note:**

> AU Future!fic

There are no happy endings.

Santana has learned this over time.

She’s also learned a few other things like: move out of the way of a swinging door after you kick it, man cannot live by bread alone, you can’t always get what you want, there’s no crying in baseball, people always want something from you, and it’s not love if you’re paying for it.

The most important thing she’s learned is that in love, there are no happy endings, especially if you’re paying for it.

\---

Brittany was a one-time thing that Santana has lost control of; a suggestion by Quinn to blow off a little steam.

Quinn said: “ _I have a friend who says she knows this girl who can make you forget you even exist_ ” and Santana was too drained to protest when Quinn pressed a phone number into her hand or when Quinn took the piece of paper back and called the number herself.

She told Santana, “ _That’s what friends do_ ” as if friends set each other up with hookers on an everyday basis.

Then again, Santana’s not sure – maybe some friends actually do that.

So while Quinn called and smirked and winked and said “ _uh huh_ ” into the phone over and over again, Santana stayed where she was on her bed, staring up at the ceiling, too tired to roll over and disconnect the phone or close her eyes. She felt the bed dip and then Quinn was leaning over her, telling her to “ _make sure you’re home tomorrow night. It’s your early Christmas present_.”

She was too tired to remind Quinn that Christmas wasn’t for another ten months, but at eight o’clock the next night, the doorbell to her apartment rang and  _Brittany_  was standing on the other side of the door with a wide smile and the bluest eyes Santana had ever seen.

It started there, that first night when Brittany sauntered through the door and dropped her shoes by the door under the front hall table – where Santana constantly reminded Quinn not to put her shoes – then walked into the living room and settling on the couch like she had been here a million times.

It started with “ _I’m Brittany. And you’re Santana_.”

It started with Brittany tucking her hand into the loops on Santana’s corduroy pants and tugging her forward until the tops of her thighs were against the arm of the couch.

It started with “ _relax_.”

\---

Six months later, when she turns down Quinn’s offer, again, to go out on a Friday night, Quinn frowns and raises an eyebrow and looks away.

“What?”

Quinn shrugs her shoulders. “I didn’t say anything.”

“But you want to,” Santana finishes, putting her coffee cup down on her desk and waiting for whatever Quinn wants to say.

“It’s just,” Quinn starts, “don’t you think that you should stop, already?”

“Stop what?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Santana. I’m better at it than you are.”

Santana rolls her eyes and leans back in her chair. “You’re the one who started this in the first place.”

“To be a one-time thing!”

“Yeah, well-”

Quinn leans forward on her elbows, stretching across Santana’s desk, her eyes pleading with Santana to listen to what she’s saying. “Santana, you’re paying her.  _Weekly_. It’s almost out of control. You’re not who you used to be, and, I mean, you could have anyone. Be normal and sleep with your secretary. I bet you wouldn’t have to pay her for it, either.”

Santana bares her teeth and leans back towards Quinn. “Listen, Blondie, I know what I’m doing.”

Quinn lifts out of her chair and heads towards the door, stopping in the doorway to look at Santana with that expression of pity it seems like everyone is giving her whenever they try to talk about Brittany. “The thing is,” she says softly, “I don’t think you do.”

\---

Quinn might have a point.

Santana was a pariah in high school, rising to the top of the social ladder in the first week of freshman year and leaving everyone in her wake quaking in fear of her. College was the same, with the exception of Quinn – who successfully remains her only friend – and when they entered the publishing world together, she was the “ _take-no-prisoners_ ” half of the partnership while Quinn was the blond-haired, hazel-eyed angel who talked in low soothing tones while Santana glared and yelled.

Since Brittany, though, Santana has tempered down and while she’s still fierce when she needs to be, the permanent scowl on her face has faded slightly and her hard eyes have softened and it’s all because Brittany is always telling her that she needs to be a nicer person; that she’ll get more out of life and from people if she just smiles every once and a while.

Brittany has never seen her scowl, except for that first night, but even then it was gone by the time Santana was on her back on the floor of her living room, hips arching off the carpet, words caught in her throat.

This thing she’s doing with Brittany has dulled her edges and made her squishy on the inside and there was a time in her life when she stood on a table, held up a shot of tequila, and swore to everyone in hearing distance that something that disgusting would never happen to her, but here she is, twenty-four years old, and it’s happening.

Quinn might have a point, and it scares her a little, that she would let something like this happen.

With someone like Brittany, of all people.

\---

She groans and stretches, popping her bones back into place. Brittany, head propped up on one hand, smiles and leans forward, kissing the space in between Santana’s shoulder and her neck.

Her other hand dances across Santana’s stomach, writing words that Santana has long since stopped trying to decipher. It follows the dip of her stomach, lingering along the hipbone, and then sliding back up to run along her ribcage.

It’s moments like this that Santana forgets there’s an envelope on the front hall table with a small stack of cash tucked away inside of it.

Brittany smiles into her skin and Santana reaches over, hooking one hand around Brittany’s hip and lifts up, her knees dropping on either side of one of Brittany’s slim thighs. She grins and leans down, capturing Brittany’s mouth in her own and pushing down with her hips, sliding forward. Brittany’s hands grip the backs of her thighs and she turns her head, so Santana kisses down her neck, sucking a little with each press of her mouth.

“Hey,” Brittany says lightly, flexing her hands against Santana’s skin quickly. She pulls her head up from Brittany’s neck and tilts her head to the side.

Brittany flashes a small smile. “I have to go,” she says quietly, glancing again at the clock on the table by the bed.

Santana pauses, hovering over Brittany. “You have to go,” she repeats.

“Sorry,” Brittany apologizes. “It’s just, I have somewhere else to be.”

“ _Somewhere else to be_ ” means “ _someone else to do_.”

She rolls back to the side, flat on her back, and drops her arm across her face, holding in her groan and blinking back the sudden heat in her eyes.

The moment is over and Brittany is a call girl again, hopping from bed to bed.

“Sure,” she says, muffled by her arm. “See ya next week, then.”

The moving on the other side of the room stops and the bed dips back down.

“Hey,” Brittany says, her face against Santana’s arm. “Don’t be upset.”

Santana drops her arm and tries to shrug her shoulders like she doesn’t care. “I’m not upset.”

She is, though, even if she doesn’t have a right to be.

Brittany knows her too well still. She knows Santana in a way that Quinn doesn’t, in a way that Quinn never will. They both know how Santana likes her coffee – black and strong, because cream and sugar make you seem weak – and that there’s one spot on the back of Santana’s elbow that can bring her knees because she’s so damn ticklish, but Brittany knows secrets that Santana only whispers in the dawn of the morning – how she never wants to be her mother, scared of everything, or how making the decision to drop out of the accounting major her father put her in was the second best decision of her life.

Calling Brittany the next week after the first time was the first, but she doesn’t say that out loud.

“Yes you are,” Brittany says, nuzzling into Santana’s neck. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.

Santana tenses and Brittany feels is, because she pulls back, eyes narrowed. “San-”

“What are you sorry for?” Santana asks roughly, cutting Brittany off. “It’s your job, isn’t it? So, go.” Because she’s angry at herself for forgetting the situation, and even angrier at herself for remembering again, she pushes up on her elbows, swings her feet around and gets out of bed. “Your money is on the table by the door,” she practically hisses. “Lock the door when you leave.”

“No, come back here,” Brittany tries, but Santana has already shut the bathroom door and turned on the shower.

She doesn’t get in, though, until she hears the front door shut.

\---

She has no right to Brittany.

She has no claim on her and she has no right to get upset that Brittany is making a living the way she is, even when she wants to stop Brittany at the door every Saturday morning and tell her that she should just quit, because Santana makes enough money so that both of them could not work for at least a year or two.

Instead, she lingers with her hand on the doorknob while Brittany slips her feet back into her heels – and how Brittany does the walk of shame each morning without making it look shameful is something Santana has never figured out – and only leans forward slightly when Brittany hooks her hand under her chin and lifts up a little, pressing a chaste kiss on her mouth that lingers there all week until Friday comes around again.

She has no right to Brittany, but somewhere during the past twenty-four weeks she forgot that and now that she’s remembered, she hates the feeling and the taste of bile in the back of her throat.

Now she remembers why she never does anything stupid, like fall in love.

\---

On Monday morning, she’s still in a bad mood and she yells at Tina, her secretary, who can only stutter in response and shakily hand over her morning coffee.

Quinn glides through her doorway around noon holding a steaming cup of coffee, a grilled cheese and a cup of clam chowder from the sandwich shop down the street because she’s clearly been told that Santana is on a warpath today, and everyone in the office knows that Quinn is the only one here who can face her in times like these without running away. She puts in on the desk and settles into the seat across from Santana.

“You were right,” she says sullenly. Quinn looks up from the book she’s reading over.

“About what?”

She hates doing this – this apologizing thing, especially to Quinn, because she hates the smug look Quinn wears for the rest of the day.

“About what I’m doing with Brittany. It’s, it’s unhealthy,” she mumbles. “So, what are you doing Friday?”

Except that Quinn, for the first time since Santana’s first apology, doesn’t look smug; she looks sorry that she’s right, and then she says, apologetic, “S, I’m sorry. I was going home this weekend, for my Dad’s birthday.” She perks up a little. “But you can come if you want.”

Santana almost laughs. “Your parents don’t like me, remember? I’m a temptress,” she reminds Quinn with a wry smile.

Quinn shakes her head. “I  _almost_  forgot. But if you come, at least I’ll be entertained.”

“I don’t live to serve you,” Santana says dully, but lifts one side of her mouth.

“Ah ha. There’s that smile.”

Santana has no choice but to smile a little wider and by the time Quinn is done reminding her about the first meeting between the Fabray’s and a college-age Santana Lopez, she almost forgets about how she spent the weekend in bed feeling like someone cut something out of her.

\---

She calls the number she has memorized by heart and is glad when Brittany doesn’t pick up.

“I’m busy Friday,” she says to the machine. “I’ll see you around.”

It’s almost easier than she thought it would be.

\---

Friday comes though, and she wishes she had gone with Quinn, because sitting in her empty apartment staring at the walls is a pathetically boring way to start off her weekend.

It’s lonely, too.

She glances at the clock too much, counting off in her head.

8:00 – Brittany would come through the unlocked door.

8:01 – She would kiss Santana hello and grab a glass of water.

8:02 – They’d talk about their week apart.

8:20 – Santana would be walking backwards towards the bedroom – since that first time, it’s always been the bedroom because rug burns and Southern California weather don’t mesh well – and Brittany would be following, giggling when Santana would stop in the doorway and brush her hands across her sides, nipping at her earlobe.

She shakes her head and frowns at her reflection in the mirror across from the couch.

She’s pathetic, being like this, and just because Quinn isn’t in town doesn’t mean Santana can’t go out and have fun. She’s never needed anyone before; why should she need anyone now?

\---

In downtown, there are clubs lining the streets and Santana knows how to dress, so she starts in one of them and just drifts down the street, in and out of clubs, collecting wristbands.

It never occurred to her that Brittany might be around; she’s trying not to think about it.

She slides into The Salty Dog, laughing at the bouncer telling her how great her ass looks, and she’s barely at the bar before she hears a laugh that she knows too well, floating across the dance floor over the thumping bass from the speakers.

It’s like the music just stops and she’s suspended in a moment and Brittany is laughing loudly and she turns, one hand on the bar to look over her shoulder and almost wishes she hadn’t, because it  _is_  Brittany, but she’s got her hands wrapped around some tall guy’s bicep and she’s leaning in from the waist, her face wide in a smile and she’s laughing in his ear.

She whips back around and flags down the bartender.

“What can I get you?”

Her eyes roam behind the bar. “Shot of whiskey. Top shelf.”

He nods approvingly and pours her the drink, setting it on the bar. She downs it quickly and slams the glass back down for another.

She’s had three when she turns around again, her eyes finding Brittany unerringly. Except that Brittany looks towards the bar before Santana can look away and Brittany’s eyes go wide and her hands around that one guy’s arm go slack.

Casually – as casually as possible, which isn’t actually casual at all – she turns back to the bar and smiles at the bartender – who tells her his name is Puck and he can get her “ _whatever you need, sugar_ ” – and signals for another drink, which she quickly swallows, ignoring the burn in her throat.

A hand touches the small of her back, a spot that would cause her to jump, but she knows that hand and she merely looks over her shoulder disinterested.

“Hey,” Brittany whispers against her ear.

Santana raises her shot in Puck the Bartender’s direction and throws it back.

“What are you doing here?”

She raises an eyebrow and looks at her empty glass, then back at Brittany. “Drinking,” she says slowly.

Brittany looks wary. “I got your message,” she says. “I thought you had something to do.”

“Yeah,” she agrees, pointing at her drink. “I am doing something.”

“I could have come with you if you want to go out.”

Santana almost laughs, but she looks back over at her shoulder at the guy across the room who seems to be telling some sort of story, glancing at the back of Brittany’s head every time his audience laughs. Brittany follows her gaze and Santana thinks that maybe she winces when she sees what Santana is looking at.

“I don’t need you to come drink with me,” she says roughly. “Besides, looks like you’re busy anyway.”

“That’s just Finn,” Brittany says quickly.

Santana wonders if that’s how Brittany talks about her to other people: “ _Oh, that’s just Santana. She doesn’t matter._ ”

She waves Brittany off. “Well,  _Just Finn_  is waiting for you to go back over there. And Puck here,” she gestures to the bartender who smiles back at her, “is going to pour me another shot.”

Brittany takes her glass from her. “Don’t serve her again, Puck.”

“Not your call, Britt,” he says back, wiping down clean tumblers. Santana is glad Puck said it first.

Santana shrugs her shoulders. “I’m getting out of here anyway. The guy at the door told me I could use his name to get into Poor House. Not that I need help getting in.” She takes a few wobbly steps away from the standing safety of the bar and turns back just a little. “See you around.”

Brittany frowns. “Friday, right?”

Santana lifts her hand and moves it side to side. “Maybe. I might go out, or something.”

“Oh,” Brittany says softly. Santana sees it being said, more than she hears it.

She winks at Puck and heads back out into early morning and decides that she’d rather throw up then go to Poor House.

Brittany always makes her feel what she doesn’t want to.

\---

“ _Or something_ ” turns out to be bar-hopping again, this time with Quinn firmly attached to her hip.

When they pass The Salty Dog, she smiles at Mike and Matt at the door and they let her in with a smile. Quinn raises her eyebrow, but Santana just smirks and sidles up to the bar, snagging a seat at the end. Quinn steps in behind her, her forearm on the bar, her other arm wrapped around Santana’s back so they don’t get lost in the crowd.

“Hey, Sugar,” Puck coos, putting a shot glass in front of her. “One for your friend?”

Quinn nods and Puck sets up another drink. “So this is what you did last weekend, huh?”

Santana nods through the bitter taste of vodka in her mouth. “I’m regaining my social life.”

“I can drink to that.” Quinn smiles and lifts her glass high before tossing it back.

She opens her mouth to ask Quinn if she wants another one when the seat on her left opens up and there’s a body sliding in and Brittany is there, eyes narrowed a little.

“You didn’t call me,” she says instead of “ _hello_.”

Santana can feel Quinn’s arm tense around her. “Hi to you too,” she says slowly, looking around to see what alternate reality she’s fallen into.

Brittany ignores her. “I thought you said you were going to call me.”

“No, I didn’t,” she corrects. “I figured you’d get the hint, if I didn’t call. Clearly,” she says, gesturing around them, “you did. Because you’re here.”

“You should have called anyway.”

Santana scoffs. “Why? It’s not like we had some standing occasion,” she says, even though it’s a lie. After the fourth time, she just stopped calling and Brittany just kept coming over.

At that, Brittany seems to kind of deflate and then she looks past Santana at Quinn and her body jerks forward a little bit, eyes sliding into slits again. “Who’s this?”

It’s almost cute, the way Brittany seems to be jealous about Quinn, but Santana is tired. She’s tired of the constant churning in her gut and the way she can’t focus on her work and she tired of feeling this way about Brittany when it’s clear that she’s just another way to the pay the bills.

“Oh,” she says lightly, turning and resting her back against Quinn’s side. “This is Quinn. Quinn, honey, this is Brittany.”

Quinn tenses but she was raised to be hospitable, so she reaches over Santana and puts her hand out. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” she says calmly.

Brittany doesn’t take the offered hand. “I haven’t heard about you,” she says bluntly. She turns her attention back to Santana. “Is  _she_  why you haven’t called me?”

“Hey,” Quinn starts, but Santana leans forward, cutting her off.

“Why?” she questions. “Do you need the money that badly?”

It’s something that’s been bugging her for a while: whether or not she’s just another job for Brittany, or if it’s more than just sex and money. It’s a question that keeps her awake at night and keeps her from accepting any of Quinn’s blind date proposals.

Brittany flinches and lifts out of her seat, towering over Santana. She’s always known that Brittany is taller than her by at least a head, but she’s never felt smaller than the blond, except for now, because Brittany’s eyes are hard and dark and her nostrils are flaring in a way that Santana shouldn’t find hot – but she does – and her mouth is clenched, her perfect, straight teeth bared.

“Screw you, Santana,” she says lowly.

Before Santana can apologize, Brittany is across the dance floor, dropping into that guy –  _Just Finn_ , Santana thinks – and whispering into his ear. She blinks and he’s grinning and then they’re standing and leaving.

Quinn’s arm loosens around Santana’s waist and she can feel Quinn’s mouth pressed against her head. “S,” she can hear Quinn whisper. “I’m sorry.”

Santana is sorry too.

She doesn’t feel like drinking anymore.

\---

Monday night, she opens the door to her apartment and finds a single envelope on the floor.

 _Brittany_  is scrawled on the outside in her own handwriting and she opens it with shaking hands, almost cutting her finger.

Inside is twenty weeks of payments, all wrapped in separate rubber bands – exactly the way she put it in the envelopes for Brittany to take when she left. A note flutters to the ground when she pulls it all out and she drops the money around her as she picks it up.

 _Dear Santana_ , it says.  _After I spent the night, I stopped spending the money. I hoped you’d stop paying me, because I thought it meant something to you, and I had a whole plan where I would start leaving **you**  money and then you would see that I didn’t want your money. I just wanted you. I guess I thought you wanted me too, but I guess you have someone new now. I hope she never gets to see the side of you that I did. And hope you’re not miserable for the rest of your life. You’re too pretty to be so sad all the time._

She laughs, bitterly, and the sound echoes off her empty apartment and hits her square in the chest, stealing the breath from her throat.

 _P.S._  it says at the bottom.  _Finn is one of my best friends from high school. I’m not sleeping with him. I’m telling you because I know you care, even if you’re reading this saying “No, I don’t.”_

Her legs give out and she lets herself fall gracelessly to the ground and ends up with her back pressed against the front door and her head against her knees.

“ _God_ ,” she chokes out, before she starts slamming her fist into the floor over and over again.

A half an hour, the super is outside her door knocking, but Santana isn’t home.

When he opens the door with his master key and sees the money on the floor and the note on the front table – and yes, he reads it, because Santana Lopez is a sweet kid and always has something nice to say to him – he shakes his head and smiles fondly.

 _Finally_ , he thinks.  _Maybe those two can get their act together_.

\---

She only has an address because she knows a guy named Artie – a children’s book author – who is technologically gifted and when she asked if he could find an address off of just a phone number he laughed like she simply asked him to do a 360° spin in his wheelchair.

Where Brittany lives isn’t anything like where Santana lives, but as soon as she turns onto the right street, she can spot Brittany’s small house.

There’s a lawn gnome by the mailbox that gives it away. Brittany had told her once “ _my brother used to tell me that the mailman was my father and I never liked him so I put out the gnome, because he was scared of them, and I never had to worry about him coming to take me away._ ”

She stands at the door, shifting her weight from side to side, hand hovering over the doorbell, and when she finally pushes it, she pulls back a little, because it sounds distinctly like a duck quacking.

Brittany pulls the door open mid-laugh and freezes that way, her eyes shining and her mouth so wide that Santana can almost see down her throat.

“Oh,” she finally says.

Santana raises her hand, but thinks better of it so it her arm just hangs uselessly in the air. “Hi,” she says lamely. “I found you.”

Brittany, graciously, ignores how stupid Santana knows she sounds. “Why were you looking for me in the first place?”

She takes a minute to think about her answer, but all she can come up with is “I missed you.”

It’s not technically what she wanted to say, but it’s definitely not a lie either.

“Do you need the sex that badly?” Brittany sneers.

Santana flinches; she deserved that.

She’s going for broke though, so she sticks her hands out in front of her as if she’s offering something –  _herself_ , the voice in her head says loudly – and shrugs her shoulder. “I need you that badly,” she says softly.

Brittany’s frown breaks and she sighs – nothing weary, but almost a laughing sigh. “I wanted to be mad a little longer and then you had to go and say that. It’s not fair.”

Santana smiles hesitantly and takes a small step forward, her hands extended a little. Brittany grabs one and tangles their fingers together, sighing again. “So,” Santana says slowly, “You’re not mad anymore.”

“I am,” Brittany corrects her, “But not as angry as I was when I opened the door. Now I mostly just have butterflies in my stomach because you look like a lost puppy.”

There might be a compliment in there, she thinks, but she’s not really concerned because she heard “ _not as angry_ ” and to Santana Lopez, that’s almost exactly the same thing as “ _over-the-moon happy_ ” so she takes another step forward and she’s toe-to-toe with Brittany, looking up a little bit.

“I’m not sleeping with Quinn,” she says, because it kind of feels necessary.

Brittany shrugs. “She told me that.”

Santana’s eyes widen. “What do you mean she told you?”

“In the bar. She was mouthing it to me while you were being a bitch.”

Her face flushes and then she frowns, because Quinn is going to get it tomorrow morning, but Brittany is lifting her chin and smiling at her, her eyes crinkling at the edges.

“It’s almost cute, though, that you tried to make me jealous.”

She smirks. “Oh yeah?”

Brittany nods, but she’s mock frowning. “Almost is the key word in that sentence. Remember that. And kiss me, now, or I’ll have to go back inside and you’ll stand out here for another ten minutes before you ring the doorbell.”

“I,” she pauses. “Wait, you were watching me stand outside?”

“I can’t always make the first move,” Brittany says seriously.

Santana takes that as an invitation and stretches up on her toes, kissing Brittany like she means it, her hands gripping Brittany’s waist and she understands that the feeling of loss that she had felt over the last two weeks was acutely numbed compared to what she feels now; the rush of  _life_  in her veins and the way something kick starts inside of her.

Her hands are reaching for the clasp on Brittany’s bra when she hears someone’s heavy footsteps and she realizes they’re standing on the front steps of Brittany’s house – even if it is dark, people can probably still see this. She moves to push Brittany off her, at least so she’s not pinned to the doorframe, which is digging into her back, but before she can untangle her hands, the footsteps get closer and that Finn guy is rounding the corner.

His eyes go wide and she freezes and thinks about what this looks like: her hands under Brittany’s shirt, Brittany’s mouth attached to her neck, Brittany’s thigh between her legs.

“ _Mailman_ ,” he whispers before turning and bolting back around the corner.

Santana doesn’t think about it too much, because Brittany is pushing in and up and she's scratching against the skin of Santana’s lower back and suddenly, nothing else matters except for Brittany.

\---

There are such things as happy endings.

Santana has learned this over time.

She’s also learned a few other things like: you don’t need to kick swinging doors, because they have gyms where you can blow off steam, man cannot live by bread alone and that’s why there are grocery stores, you can’t always get what you want but you can try, there’s no crying in baseball but she doesn’t play anymore so it doesn’t matter, people always want something from you and you should try and give as much as you can, and if you’re paying for it, there’s a chance it could still be love.

The most important thing she’s learned is that in love, happy endings exist, because you’re probably not paying for it the way you think you are.


End file.
